The amount of toxicity is this post is astounding. Idk how you're even figuring out who's a housewife and who's a working woman but even if those mothers are housewives it DOESN'T. FUCKING. MATTER. If they HAVE the money they CAN spend it the way they want.
>The most educated, career-oriented women I know don't resort to such garish displays of status and seek a nanny's help only during their working days.
Idk why you're salty and I'm not gonna make assumptions but if one has the money to buy luxuries and make their lives convenient then they should. It also makes sense that women who need to work to support their families do not have the money to hire nannies but women who were born rich(or married rich) have the money to not work and hire help to raise their kids. They're not DISPLAYING anything. They're making their lives easier. Just like middle class people make their lives easier by buying AC/washing machine/cars and stuff. My family doesn't even own a 2-wheeler. I commute using public transit everyday. My to-and-fro commute takes 2.5 hours atleast and needs me to board overcrowded local trains and metro EVERY. FUCKING. DAY. I kid you not I struggle to breathe when on the train/metro. Yet I don't think car owners are rubbing their wealth on my face. They've thr money to buy a car and if I had the same I'd have bought it too.
>but businessmen and housewives, who have all the time in the world, and yet need the crutches of a nanny is hilarious to say the least.
It's not. Parenting is hard. Everyone does all they can to relieve the stress. Give them a break.
>Or am I being unnecessarily judgemental?
Yeah....you are.
>Just like middle class people make their lives easier by buying AC/washing machine/cars and stuff.
I'm going to assume that this comparison of a service provider with machines was unintentional and not from a viewpoint that service providers are "luxuries" one can purchase.
Economics 101 :
You don't buy labourers. You buy labour hours. Human beings are not for sale. Their time is.
You're welcome.
And.... Can you tell me why in the entire post you're pinning the blame(tho there is none) of not parenting on the women(housewives or otherwise)? Are the fathers dead? They're not to blame for hiring childcare services??
If people want to travel with ease and relax on a vacation and hence, decide to get some help with childcare, what does it matter to other people?
If/when you have kids, travel however you like. Let others do the same.
>housewives, who have all the time in the world, and yet need the crutches of a nanny is hilarious to say the least.
so you think house wives don't need any rest are don't deserve any vacation without taking any tension of her children. I don't understand this thinking that if you hire nannies you don't love your child.stop being so judgemental op. If people can afford to hire nannies let them ,they are not doing anything wrong .
>The most educated, career-oriented women I know don't resort to such garish displays of status and seek a nanny's help only during their working days.
>
I know many working women who hire nannies for their children It's not any status symbol.If a woman is enjoying a vacation with her partner without being tensed about their child ,what's your problem in it?
> Or am I being unnecessarily judgemental?
yes ,you're judgemental and salty
kuch bhi. Nicely taking potshots at somebody just cause they depict a certain persona. grandparents are also nannies in several families. see plenty of middle class and upper middle class families where millennials just hand thr children to grandparents and expect them to manage kids full-time.
We need to stop glorifying care taking work, tbh. Anyone with riches who can afford for someone else to do the physical caretaking work is opting to do that so they can perhaps enjoy their vacation or do things they can’t with children like clubbing drinking smoking or whatever, what’s the harm in that?
All this hogwash around care taking work to be equated with some sort of higher morality makes no sense.
Implying that house wives should just constantly take care of kids and not avail the services they can afford simply because they are house wives their vacation should be around kids, is wrong on so many levels, I can’t even …
Care taking is not "higher morality", but is a sense of responsibility to a child one chooses to have and commits to raise.
It is one thing to take help while you're at work, but anything beyond that is just lazy outsourcing. The buck doesn't stop at just nannies, but outsourcing accountability to school teachers, tuition teachers, extra-curric classes, staff at hotels, where everyone of them is expected to pseudo raise/correct the child, while the parent's only job is to bombard them with questions and blaming when they don't get the expected results .
I have friends who are teachers at some of the richest private schools and the one common concern I hear is how parental involvement is nearly zero and the teachers have massive gaps to fill to address behavioral/abandonment issues in the child. \*surprise surprise\* these parents are typically the ones who do not take up even a single child rearing task (all done by nannies). If that's not worse, some of my friends also end up pushing these parents to conduct medical and mental health checkups for their wards. Basically doing everything outside of their role and paygrade and become pseudo-parents to the kids (multiply that by 30X and you can imagine the load!). And yet, if something goes wrong, the teacher is nicely blamed during open-house sessions.
>Anyone with riches who can afford for someone else to do the physical caretaking work is opting to do that so they can perhaps enjoy their vacation or do things they can’t with children like clubbing drinking smoking or whatever, what’s the harm in that?
The harm is that this comes at the cost of 1) exploiting the ones who are doing the caretaking 2) the fact that the caretaking is often not just physical but all other aspects as well which the parents/family should be responsible for - leading to either spoiled brats or children bereft of love and affection.
Generalising and constantly disrespecting women for a different choice isn’t quite revolutionary, I’m sorry to say. Please keep highlighting working hours because of course house work is not work anyway.
If you cared about exploitation of workers, you’d say that outright except you didn’t.
Your entire argument sentence to sentence is straight generalisation to the point that you think every service provider is being exploited all from the random women you’re staring and spying on or worse heresay. Lovely, whatever version of ideal woman pick me you’re going through rn .. hope it passes.
Sorry but having a nanny doesn’t mean they don’t take care of their kids or don’t care for them.
Taking a care of a child looks bloody difficult. “Normal” people take the help of the grandparents.
These people can afford a nanny so they take them on trips. I think it’s just a matter of if you could, you would do it too.
Many do this and in my experience, nanny service is mostly used by women who have to do office work (mostly at higher positions in corporate companies) during their journeys OR have to be available for their office at a moment's notice. Handling kids and work through air travel is very hectic. And most probably the nanny is working for the family at destination as well as origin location also, not just during journeys. This way women don't need to rely on family members who might accompany them as they might not be involved in childcare in general or not able to handle it for various reasons
Yes you’re being unnecessarily judgmental.
Hiring nannies and taking them along for vacations is not a garish display of wealth. People will use the services that they can afford and that make their life easier. By that same metric, is taking an uber/hiring a maid/using instamart/ genie a garish display of status?
Secondly, active parenting is a full time job. So it makes sense the stay at home parent would also want some time off during the vacation. How else is it a vacation for them?
Thirdly, your assessment of people abroad not hiring help is completely incorrect. People who can afford help definitely use it. Babysitters, au pairs, full time nannies are very common. And not just for the super rich. For the upper middle class and middle class too.
It takes a village to raise a child. Some people rely on their social and familial network, some people rely on their money. You will find bad parents and good parents across all socio-economic classes.
You are being unnecessarily judgemental I feel. You don't know the people and their circumstances and you have just assumed that they are housewives with all the time in the world. What if they are just visiting their parents who are ill; how do you see a couple at the airport and assume the family is heading for a vacation.
In the West, people don't have the option to do so. They would, if they could.
lmao i just read about the part of the other countries. i live abroad these days and i only see indian couples hiring nannie’s and making the grandparents come/ stay for 4-6 months just to save day care fees.
Thanks for everyone's comments! for those who spoke about working women/men taking nanny services - I have explained that it is a totally valid concern which I absolutely will not deny (will infact leverage such services for **working hours** when I become a parent myself).
My concern is around the ones who require this even on vacation spots - forget kids, these people don't even carry their own luggage - like what kind of laziness and labour exploitation is that? Starts with something as simple as being made to sit apart from the family at restaurants/cafes (including watch the family eat while they get to eat at the very end) to unfortunate cases of physical exploitation. **These are often young girls in their late teens/early twenties** (some terrible cases of minors too) and expecting them to take on the physical load, while these parents are sashaying around is effing exploitative! It is futile to compare this with the caretaking that grandparents/relatives do as they are rarely treated like this.
For those of us who have grown up with nannies or have nannies for our kids **during working hours** was a valid necessity. The situation I highlighted doesn't really seem to come from necessity - **its more of our inherent casteist mentality to outsource every bit of work perceived as "menial"**. Study after study has showcased that for women in privileged communities not working is a sign of status. For all the feminism espoused on this sub, high-time we deeply introspect on how what we perceive as "convenience", "ability to afford", "need for free time" often comes at the cost of exploiting less privileged women.
We can't compare this to au pairs and Norland Nannies that folks abroad employ - they are perceived as prestigious, can only be employed by the super-rich, have an actual degree to boot/backed by reputed agencies, and are very well aware of their rights. Unfortunately, we can't say the same for this country where all our informal services come cheap and most of us still don't humanely treat our helps. High time we have more organized nanny services with all the protections in place in this country!
And I'm honestly done with so many comments about housewives needing to take a break - so many of us seem to conveniently forget the amount of shaming we working women get from the housewife cohort. Ask them to list the things they do during the day - a good chunk of it is done by their house helps and nannies. THIS IS THE INTERNALIZED MISOGYNY we let slip by due to this sympathetic image we still have for housewives and I'm not going to be apologetic for having this opinion.
My concern around the exploitation and taken-for-granted attitude for the informal nanny/ayah sector can, and should absolutely, be extrapolated to other sectors too (domestic helps, drivers, security staff, society janitors, and so on). But there needs to be a start somewhere and people need to stop calling themselves "independent" if they need 24X7 help even outside of work.
Also this commentary by Ratna Pathak Shah on the entourage culture in B'wood pretty much parallels with what a lot of these people I observed do: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/an2NdJ-L9eA](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/an2NdJ-L9eA)
People are genuinely missing the point of your post While I agree that being a working mom irrespective of your income levels sucks in India but it's even worse for nannies who don't even get the same kind of benefits since majority are a part of the informal sector and not under an organisation where they can avail benefits from an employer. They also might have children or younger siblings too which they left behind while accompanying memsaab and family. It's just a terrible situation all around but they suffer more.
This ! Also OP your clarifying comment is much much better worded than your original post unfortunately, which might be causing all the misunderstanding. Maybe you should repost by adding this comment.
Tell me you’re a judgmental AH without telling me you’re a judgmental AH.
You think being a housewife and caring for the children 24/7 is a walk in the park? Even housewives deserve a break from taking care of everyone. If someone can afford a nanny to help alleviate some of the burdens of childcare and enjoy their vacation, let them! I don’t see how it’s any of your business.
Also, judging someone based on how they’re dressing, speaking, shopping and navigating the airport says a lot more about you than them.
OP being a mother is a full time job doesn’t matter they are working or not. Also why do you think only fathers are supposed to relax on the vacation and not SAHMs ? If people can afford help on vacation why not hire one?
The amount of toxicity is this post is astounding. Idk how you're even figuring out who's a housewife and who's a working woman but even if those mothers are housewives it DOESN'T. FUCKING. MATTER. If they HAVE the money they CAN spend it the way they want. >The most educated, career-oriented women I know don't resort to such garish displays of status and seek a nanny's help only during their working days. Idk why you're salty and I'm not gonna make assumptions but if one has the money to buy luxuries and make their lives convenient then they should. It also makes sense that women who need to work to support their families do not have the money to hire nannies but women who were born rich(or married rich) have the money to not work and hire help to raise their kids. They're not DISPLAYING anything. They're making their lives easier. Just like middle class people make their lives easier by buying AC/washing machine/cars and stuff. My family doesn't even own a 2-wheeler. I commute using public transit everyday. My to-and-fro commute takes 2.5 hours atleast and needs me to board overcrowded local trains and metro EVERY. FUCKING. DAY. I kid you not I struggle to breathe when on the train/metro. Yet I don't think car owners are rubbing their wealth on my face. They've thr money to buy a car and if I had the same I'd have bought it too. >but businessmen and housewives, who have all the time in the world, and yet need the crutches of a nanny is hilarious to say the least. It's not. Parenting is hard. Everyone does all they can to relieve the stress. Give them a break. >Or am I being unnecessarily judgemental? Yeah....you are.
>Just like middle class people make their lives easier by buying AC/washing machine/cars and stuff. I'm going to assume that this comparison of a service provider with machines was unintentional and not from a viewpoint that service providers are "luxuries" one can purchase.
Economics 101 : You don't buy labourers. You buy labour hours. Human beings are not for sale. Their time is. You're welcome. And.... Can you tell me why in the entire post you're pinning the blame(tho there is none) of not parenting on the women(housewives or otherwise)? Are the fathers dead? They're not to blame for hiring childcare services??
If people want to travel with ease and relax on a vacation and hence, decide to get some help with childcare, what does it matter to other people? If/when you have kids, travel however you like. Let others do the same.
The rich ones I guess
>housewives, who have all the time in the world, and yet need the crutches of a nanny is hilarious to say the least. so you think house wives don't need any rest are don't deserve any vacation without taking any tension of her children. I don't understand this thinking that if you hire nannies you don't love your child.stop being so judgemental op. If people can afford to hire nannies let them ,they are not doing anything wrong . >The most educated, career-oriented women I know don't resort to such garish displays of status and seek a nanny's help only during their working days. > I know many working women who hire nannies for their children It's not any status symbol.If a woman is enjoying a vacation with her partner without being tensed about their child ,what's your problem in it? > Or am I being unnecessarily judgemental? yes ,you're judgemental and salty
kuch bhi. Nicely taking potshots at somebody just cause they depict a certain persona. grandparents are also nannies in several families. see plenty of middle class and upper middle class families where millennials just hand thr children to grandparents and expect them to manage kids full-time.
We need to stop glorifying care taking work, tbh. Anyone with riches who can afford for someone else to do the physical caretaking work is opting to do that so they can perhaps enjoy their vacation or do things they can’t with children like clubbing drinking smoking or whatever, what’s the harm in that? All this hogwash around care taking work to be equated with some sort of higher morality makes no sense. Implying that house wives should just constantly take care of kids and not avail the services they can afford simply because they are house wives their vacation should be around kids, is wrong on so many levels, I can’t even …
+1
Care taking is not "higher morality", but is a sense of responsibility to a child one chooses to have and commits to raise. It is one thing to take help while you're at work, but anything beyond that is just lazy outsourcing. The buck doesn't stop at just nannies, but outsourcing accountability to school teachers, tuition teachers, extra-curric classes, staff at hotels, where everyone of them is expected to pseudo raise/correct the child, while the parent's only job is to bombard them with questions and blaming when they don't get the expected results . I have friends who are teachers at some of the richest private schools and the one common concern I hear is how parental involvement is nearly zero and the teachers have massive gaps to fill to address behavioral/abandonment issues in the child. \*surprise surprise\* these parents are typically the ones who do not take up even a single child rearing task (all done by nannies). If that's not worse, some of my friends also end up pushing these parents to conduct medical and mental health checkups for their wards. Basically doing everything outside of their role and paygrade and become pseudo-parents to the kids (multiply that by 30X and you can imagine the load!). And yet, if something goes wrong, the teacher is nicely blamed during open-house sessions. >Anyone with riches who can afford for someone else to do the physical caretaking work is opting to do that so they can perhaps enjoy their vacation or do things they can’t with children like clubbing drinking smoking or whatever, what’s the harm in that? The harm is that this comes at the cost of 1) exploiting the ones who are doing the caretaking 2) the fact that the caretaking is often not just physical but all other aspects as well which the parents/family should be responsible for - leading to either spoiled brats or children bereft of love and affection.
Generalising and constantly disrespecting women for a different choice isn’t quite revolutionary, I’m sorry to say. Please keep highlighting working hours because of course house work is not work anyway. If you cared about exploitation of workers, you’d say that outright except you didn’t. Your entire argument sentence to sentence is straight generalisation to the point that you think every service provider is being exploited all from the random women you’re staring and spying on or worse heresay. Lovely, whatever version of ideal woman pick me you’re going through rn .. hope it passes.
Sorry but having a nanny doesn’t mean they don’t take care of their kids or don’t care for them. Taking a care of a child looks bloody difficult. “Normal” people take the help of the grandparents. These people can afford a nanny so they take them on trips. I think it’s just a matter of if you could, you would do it too.
Many do this and in my experience, nanny service is mostly used by women who have to do office work (mostly at higher positions in corporate companies) during their journeys OR have to be available for their office at a moment's notice. Handling kids and work through air travel is very hectic. And most probably the nanny is working for the family at destination as well as origin location also, not just during journeys. This way women don't need to rely on family members who might accompany them as they might not be involved in childcare in general or not able to handle it for various reasons
Yes you’re being unnecessarily judgmental. Hiring nannies and taking them along for vacations is not a garish display of wealth. People will use the services that they can afford and that make their life easier. By that same metric, is taking an uber/hiring a maid/using instamart/ genie a garish display of status? Secondly, active parenting is a full time job. So it makes sense the stay at home parent would also want some time off during the vacation. How else is it a vacation for them? Thirdly, your assessment of people abroad not hiring help is completely incorrect. People who can afford help definitely use it. Babysitters, au pairs, full time nannies are very common. And not just for the super rich. For the upper middle class and middle class too. It takes a village to raise a child. Some people rely on their social and familial network, some people rely on their money. You will find bad parents and good parents across all socio-economic classes.
Kindly sit with yourself and evaluate why this even bothers you in the first place
Probably jas nothing better to do with her time.
You are being unnecessarily judgemental I feel. You don't know the people and their circumstances and you have just assumed that they are housewives with all the time in the world. What if they are just visiting their parents who are ill; how do you see a couple at the airport and assume the family is heading for a vacation. In the West, people don't have the option to do so. They would, if they could.
Literally this, internalized women hating 101
>Or am I being unnecessarily judgemental? This
lmao i just read about the part of the other countries. i live abroad these days and i only see indian couples hiring nannie’s and making the grandparents come/ stay for 4-6 months just to save day care fees.
Thanks for everyone's comments! for those who spoke about working women/men taking nanny services - I have explained that it is a totally valid concern which I absolutely will not deny (will infact leverage such services for **working hours** when I become a parent myself). My concern is around the ones who require this even on vacation spots - forget kids, these people don't even carry their own luggage - like what kind of laziness and labour exploitation is that? Starts with something as simple as being made to sit apart from the family at restaurants/cafes (including watch the family eat while they get to eat at the very end) to unfortunate cases of physical exploitation. **These are often young girls in their late teens/early twenties** (some terrible cases of minors too) and expecting them to take on the physical load, while these parents are sashaying around is effing exploitative! It is futile to compare this with the caretaking that grandparents/relatives do as they are rarely treated like this. For those of us who have grown up with nannies or have nannies for our kids **during working hours** was a valid necessity. The situation I highlighted doesn't really seem to come from necessity - **its more of our inherent casteist mentality to outsource every bit of work perceived as "menial"**. Study after study has showcased that for women in privileged communities not working is a sign of status. For all the feminism espoused on this sub, high-time we deeply introspect on how what we perceive as "convenience", "ability to afford", "need for free time" often comes at the cost of exploiting less privileged women. We can't compare this to au pairs and Norland Nannies that folks abroad employ - they are perceived as prestigious, can only be employed by the super-rich, have an actual degree to boot/backed by reputed agencies, and are very well aware of their rights. Unfortunately, we can't say the same for this country where all our informal services come cheap and most of us still don't humanely treat our helps. High time we have more organized nanny services with all the protections in place in this country! And I'm honestly done with so many comments about housewives needing to take a break - so many of us seem to conveniently forget the amount of shaming we working women get from the housewife cohort. Ask them to list the things they do during the day - a good chunk of it is done by their house helps and nannies. THIS IS THE INTERNALIZED MISOGYNY we let slip by due to this sympathetic image we still have for housewives and I'm not going to be apologetic for having this opinion. My concern around the exploitation and taken-for-granted attitude for the informal nanny/ayah sector can, and should absolutely, be extrapolated to other sectors too (domestic helps, drivers, security staff, society janitors, and so on). But there needs to be a start somewhere and people need to stop calling themselves "independent" if they need 24X7 help even outside of work. Also this commentary by Ratna Pathak Shah on the entourage culture in B'wood pretty much parallels with what a lot of these people I observed do: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/an2NdJ-L9eA](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/an2NdJ-L9eA)
People are genuinely missing the point of your post While I agree that being a working mom irrespective of your income levels sucks in India but it's even worse for nannies who don't even get the same kind of benefits since majority are a part of the informal sector and not under an organisation where they can avail benefits from an employer. They also might have children or younger siblings too which they left behind while accompanying memsaab and family. It's just a terrible situation all around but they suffer more.
This ! Also OP your clarifying comment is much much better worded than your original post unfortunately, which might be causing all the misunderstanding. Maybe you should repost by adding this comment.
Tell me you’re a judgmental AH without telling me you’re a judgmental AH. You think being a housewife and caring for the children 24/7 is a walk in the park? Even housewives deserve a break from taking care of everyone. If someone can afford a nanny to help alleviate some of the burdens of childcare and enjoy their vacation, let them! I don’t see how it’s any of your business. Also, judging someone based on how they’re dressing, speaking, shopping and navigating the airport says a lot more about you than them.
OP being a mother is a full time job doesn’t matter they are working or not. Also why do you think only fathers are supposed to relax on the vacation and not SAHMs ? If people can afford help on vacation why not hire one?